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Well, it was fun while it lasted, wasn’t it?
Wasn’t it?!
If you’re not sure who I am, I’m the bloke from Northampton (it’s a town in the UK that’s famous for shoes and Jo Whiley – you won’t have heard of it) who has basically made a living out of instigating arguments on the internet about unified memory.
Those arguments centred around Apple’s decision to ‘only’ equip its base-level Apple Silicon Macs with 8GB of unified memory.
Yesterday, that all changed with the launch of the M4 iMac, which now comes with 16GB of unified memory as standard. That’s right – the 8GB version no longer exists, and it’s looking like that trend will continue across the entire Mac product line as we enter the M4 (and beyond) era.
This is a bigger deal than it might sound.
The big 8GB vs 16GB debate
It might surprise you to hear that some of my top-performing content in both written and video form is about unified memory. Remember – I’m the tech reviewer who rarely deep dives into specs, and only gives them a brief mention at the start of any review.
Despite this, the unified memory debate for Apple Silicon Macs has always been a talking point within the comments section of any video I make about those computers. People have referred to Apple’s base-level memory choice as “unfair” and entirely at odds with what its customers expect – let alone with the rest of the industry. I even had someone call it “criminal”.
No, really.
Why were people so angry about the presence of an 8GB Mac in Apple’s starting line-up? I think it’s pretty simple – the world, in their eyes, has moved on. Windows machines with 8GB of RAM are few and far between these days, and those that have such a low memory count are usually of the bargain bin variety. I.e. no one buys them apart from your tight uncle and the NHS.
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They have a point. This is classic Apple; offer the bare minimum to keep profit margins healthy and wrap everything up in beautiful packaging. A sprinkling of very clever marketing copy later and you’ve got a product that a lot of people will still buy, regardless of any perceived deficiencies from people in the know.
The problem is that Apple had a point, too. Because, ironically, the world has moved on.
Did it ever matter?
I still stand firm on this: the 8GB versus 16GB of unified memory debate was a lot of hot air. Apple silicon is far less reliant on memory than the Intel chips it has replaced.
It caught me off guard, once. On a trip to London a couple of years ago, I found myself with some last-minute video editing that needed undertaking and only my base model M2 MacBook Air to do it on. Hunkered down in the basement seating area in a Starbucks, I got to work.
Or, at least, I tried to. Unfortunately, the MacBook Air coughed, spluttered, and drunkenly jittered across the timeline I was attempting to edit. It got so bad that I had to give up and rush home, instead.
The most frustrating thing about that episode was that I’d had no such trouble with my base model M1 MacBook Air on the rare occasions I’d used that laptop for video editing. It would, therefore, be easier to blame the M2 chip for the problems I faced in Starbucks, but with hindsight and a bit more knowledge of how this stuff works, I know that the amount of unified memory I had at my disposal was also to blame. Final Cut Pro, or the video codec I was using, had moved on since my M1 MacBook Air days and needed a bit more headroom.
That’s always been my point, though. On that frustrating day in London, I ignored my own advice which is to only invest in the machine that you know will do the job required of it. If you’re a video editor, you’re not going to opt for 8GB of unified memory – you’re going to spec up your Mac as much as possible to avoid any headaches.
But what about everyone else? What about the people who had smaller budgets and would only ever use their Mac for basic tasks? As it turns out, 8GB of memory was fine for them. I know this because I’m one of them. The story I’ve just told is an anomaly; every 8GB Mac I’ve had has been used in this business for normal stuff: writing, email, web research, calls with the team – and they smash those tasks.
If 8GB is a deal breaker, you should just spend more and leave the 8GB folks to their own devices – literally. That was always my point.
Apple’s new dawn
The M4 iMac can’t be configured with 8GB of unified memory. It’s either 16GB, 24GB, or 32GB. The fact that, in the UK, the iMac has seen a £100 price decrease this time around means, effectively, we’re getting double the starting memory, for less.
Yes, you read that right.
It’s faster memory, too. And that 32GB option wasn’t an option before; with the M3 iMac, the top-spec could only be configured with 24GB, maximum, and that might not have been enough for the memory-hungry users out there.
Put simply, Apple has made huge strides with the unified memory situation on the new iMac. I guess that was always the plan; I don’t think it’s in answer to the critics – Apple doesn’t work like that. The strategy for details such as base model unified memory and configurable options will have been set some time ago.
I’m all for this, despite my defence of the 8GB situation. It’s time to move on, and with Apple Intelligence gradually making its way out into the wild, the amount of unified memory on hand will become more important than ever – even for ‘normal’ users.
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